Winning team Direla created a QR code-based payment system for low-income users and retail partners.
The University of Cape Town’s (UCT’s) Financial Innovation Hub has crowned the winners of its fintech hackathon, with team Direla taking the top spot.
Hosted in collaboration with the Interledger Foundation, the week-long hackathon saw 12 teams made up of students from UCT, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, University of the Western Cape and Eduvos take part.
It aimed to showcase the potential of fintech innovation in addressing pressing issues in the country, such as financial inclusion and access to payment systems.
According to a statement, the student teams were tasked with developing innovative solutions to real-world payment challenges in SA.
Team Direla took first prize for their solution that enables low-income users and retail partners who don’t wish to use point-of-sale devices for small transactions, to transact using self-generated QR codes, it notes.
The winning team will get an opportunity to work with the Interledger Protocol to create open-payment solutions.
“Hackathons give students the opportunity to create solutions for challenges that they identify in their lived realities,” says Dr Allan Davids, director of the Financial Innovation Hub.
“The teams are made up of students from the Financial Innovation Hub, alongside students from UCT and other higher education institutions, studying disciplines such as computer science, computer and electrical engineering and statistics. They all work together as a team to develop technological solutions for real problems – each contributing their own learned skillsets into product-based technology.”
Raul Ranete, judge and software engineer at the Interledger Foundation, comments: “As a judge, you’re sitting in the front seat of someone’s invented ‘car’. You get to see the way that they process their argument, how they build it, what the data is behind it, and what the code engineering is. You get to see new ideas and be surprised by the fact that something such as the Interledger Protocol and open-payments could potentially be used in these left-field ways. As they use our software, they also point out to us what their needs and their community’s needs are.”
Team Fin Illuminaries won second place for its USSD-driven solution to provide residents in rural areas with an alternative to ATMs by making digital financial services accessible through local spaza shops. Alongside this solution, the Interledger Wallet can be used to make payments to small, informal businesses.
FlowFi took the third spot for its crowdfunding platform for students. The solution enables storytelling for the funded and the ability to match yourself as a funder with the individual. The use of the Interledger Wallet creates a unique incoming payment URL that tracks payments until the donation total is reached.
Former UCT student and hackathon judge Si-Jia Wu comments: “From my perspective, these hackathons stimulate a lot of interest in the entrepreneurial space. I am involved with GenesisBloc, a pre-incubator programme, and I’m looking for novelty, some technical expertise, and for students that we can support from an entrepreneurial perspective.”
